On Staten Island, where the GOP primary has turned into a proxy battle for which candidate can demonstrate the most loyalty to Donald Trump, turnout might be more representative of national trends. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

9 things to watch in Tuesday's primaries

New York's congressional primaries, often a sleepy affair, have been spiced up by a few contentious races that will play out Tuesday as voters head to the polls.

The race that has garnered the most attention is the Republican primary on Staten Island, in New York’s 11th District. That’s where Rep. Dan Donovan, who once styled himself as a moderate Republican, has raced to embrace President Donald Trump in an effort to fend off a challenge from former Rep. Michael Grimm. Grimm held the seat before Donovan, but he resigned it in 2015 after pleading guilty to tax fraud. There are also a handful of high-profile Democratic primaries in New York City, where young challengers are taking on long-time incumbents — In New York’s 12th District, Rep. Carolyn Maloney is facing a 34-year-old hotel executive and NYU business ethics professor. In New York’s 9th District, in Central Brooklyn, Rep. Yvette Clarke is facing a 30-year-old Harvard MBA and son of Ugandan immigrants, who’s attacked her for her relative lack of legislative accomplishments in Washington. And in New York’s 14th District, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old political activist and Bernie Sanders supporter, is taking on incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, one of the highest-ranking Democratic members of the House.

Story Continued Below

Here are nine things to watch in Tuesday’s races.

1. It all comes down to turnout.

This may come as a shock, but congressional primaries in New York are typically low-turnout events. Even in high-profile races, the turnout is low. Getting into the double digits is big time. When longtime incumbent Charles Rangel faced a strong challenge from Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th Congressional District in 2014, turnout was 14.5 percent. When Maloney faced a challenger in New York’s 12th district in 2016, turnout was a little over 5 percent. In other states, relatively high or low turnout could be seen as a bellwether of voter enthusiasm for the midterm general elections, but political analysts POLITICO spoke with cautioned against that in New York. Low turnout might be indicative of nothing more than the state's confusing primary system.

“I’m really curious about turnout,” Fordham political science professor Christina Greer told POLITICO. New York’s federal primary takes place at the end of June, as school is ending, when “no one’s focused on election time.” New York’s federal primary date is mandated as June 26 by court order, but state lawmakers refuse to move the state and local primaries so the races align. Good government groups and skeptics think this is part of a deliberate strategy by lawmakers to keep turnout low, because low turnout tends to favor incumbents.

“There are very few people in these contested districts that even know that there’s an election,” Greer said.

On Staten Island, where the GOP primary has turned into a proxy battle for which candidate can demonstrate the most loyalty to President Donald Trump, turnout might be more representative of national trends. Steve Romalewski, head of the CUNY Graduate Mapping Center, is particularly interested in how many people come out for that race.

“Of course we’ll be watching turnout in that race, to see if the intensity of the GOP campaigns, at least, will act to boost turnout despite having the election in the summer rather than the fall with all the other statewide primaries,” he told POLITICO. “Turnout in the 2010 GOP primary was about 14 percent of registered GOP voters. Turnout in 2016 for the GOP presidential primary was about 26 percent citywide, and certainly above that on Staten Island. We’ll see if those Trump voters come out again, and who they support.”

2. Who voted?

Election results won’t show this, but much has been made in recent months of the idea that women — and after the Parkland school shooting, 18-year-olds — might demonstrate their political power in this year’s midterm elections by turning out to vote in greater numbers. Democratic primaries in safe blue districts probably won’t motivate young people who are energized about gun control, but will young candidates like Suraj Patel and Ocasio-Cortez inspire people their own age to vote?

Regardless, data from New York’s state Board of Elections shows there’s been very little growth in the number of Democratic enrolled voters in the New York City districts with high-profile primaries since the November 2016 presidential election.

The number of enrolled Democratic voters grew by about 2.5 percent in Maloney and Crowley’s districts, and by just 1.5 percent in Clarke’s.

3. Did money matter?

Money is flooding in from all corners of the GOP establishment and beyond to help Donovan win his race against Grimm. Will it make a difference?

Meanwhile, incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel is facing a challenge from Jonathan Lewis, who’s managed to raise nearly $860,000, much of it self-funded, in his effort to unseat the incumbent who’s been in office since 1989. Patel has raised $1.2 million in his race against Maloney.

Out on Long Island, five Democrats are running for the chance to face incumbent Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin. One candidate, Perry Gershon, has raised $2.1 million, far more than his opponents. But political observers are expecting Kate Browning, who’s raised slightly less than half a million dollars, to win on Tuesday.

In New York’s 19th district in the Hudson Valley, seven Democratic candidates are facing off in the hopes of running against Rep. John Faso in November, in a district that’s considered a possible pickup for the House Democrats. Democratic candidate Antonio Delgado has managed to raise $2.3 million, while Brian Flynn and Patrick Ryan have both raised $1.5 million. But Delgado, Flynn and Ryan have less institutional support than Gareth Rhodes, the former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo who’s managed to raise just under $800,000, but has also picked up support from influential unions, which can help drive turnout in primaries.

4. What is a blowout?

All the political prognosticators POLITICO spoke to said they expected the Democratic incumbents facing challengers Tuesday to win reelection. The question is, how much do they need to win by in order for a victory to be a decisive one? If a candidate like Ocasio-Cortez can win 30 percent of the vote against Crowley, the fourth ranking Democrat in the House, that would be considered a huge symbolic victory, some political analysts suggested. And Maloney has routinely dispatched her challengers, when she has them, winning 80 percent of the vote. In the Bronx, Engel has to do well enough in the primary against Lewis to ward off future potential primary challengers. When the appearance of strength matters, winning by a simple majority just won’t do.

5. Progressives versus the establishment

In New York’s 24th Congressional District, there’s a fascinating Democratic primary going on in the fight to take on Republican John Katko. Progressive groups and local Democratic organizations had already thrown their support behind first-time candidate Dana Balter earlier this year, when the DCCC stepped in and decided to endorse a different candidate — Juanita Perez Williams, who has high name recognition in the area. Perez Williams ran as a Democrat for mayor of Syracuse, which is a majority Democratic city, and lost to an Independent. Balter had struggled to raise money, because of her low profile, and some Democrats see Perez Williams as the better pick to take on the powerful incumbent. That dynamic — the tension between the grassroots candidates inspired by Trump’s election to run for office, and the establishment Democrats who argue they have the know-how to win — even if it’s less inspiring to the party’s base — is playing out in races all across the state.

6. Does social media translate to votes? Does national media translate?

In the last few weeks, Ocasio-Cortez has been written up in Vogue, BuzzFeed, the Intercept, Huffington Post, the Nation and Vox. She’s amassed a Twitter following and drawn the attention of the internet avatars of the “Resistance” to Donald Trump, becoming a darling of the left in her race against incumbent Crowley. That kind of media attention appears to have drawn donors from around the country to give to her race, but Twitter followers don’t necessarily translate into votes.

7. If Grimm wins, will Donovan choose party over himself and back Grimm?

The Donovan vs. Grimm race in New York’s 11th District could turn into a nail-biter. Someone will win the Republican line eventually, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the other will disappear. Both men are running on the conservative line as well, and Donovan also won the nominations of the Independence Party and Reform Party, which means that even if Donovan loses the primary to Grimm, he could still be on the ballot in November, creating a possible three-way race that could throw the district, which actually has a plurality of Democrats, into the hands of the House Democrats.

That possibility has the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee salivating, in hopes they can run their candidate, a well-funded military veteran named Max Rose, against both Republicans. In a mass email Monday, the DCCC opined that “while a split ballot would be a nightmare scenario for Republicans, make no mistake—Max Rose has the profile and campaign to beat either Grimm or Donovan this fall.”

Grimm has pledged publicly that he’d back Donovan if Donovan wins, but Donovan is keeping mum about whether he’d do the same.

“Grimm’s been very open and clear about backing Dan if he happens to win,” Grimm campaign spokesman Joe Shikhman told POLITICO.

“Grimm had pledged he wouldn’t seek another ballot line but you know how that turned out,” Donovan’s campaign spokesperson Jessica Proud told POLITICO, when asked whether Donovan would back Grimm as the party’s nominee in the general election, even if Donovan loses. “We expect to win tomorrow. Not something we are thinking about right now,” Proud said.

But Fordham political science professor Christina Greer wonders if the Times endorsement might backfire against Bunkeddeko in a district that has seen rapid gentrification in recent years.

If voters in the Central Brooklyn district associate the paper’s imprimatur with some of the gentrifiers moving into their neighborhood, then “getting the New York Times endorsement might not necessarily be a great thing,” Greer said.

9. How much does a Trump endorsement matter?

“I think we’ll see the raw power of a Trump endorsement Tuesday,” CUNY College of Staten Island Political Science professor Rich Flanagan told POLITICO.

He was talking about the 11th District race, where the president has thrown his support behind Dan Donovan, in a series of tweets.

“We’ll see if it carries Donovan to the finish line. Does a tweet from Trump turn things around for a candidate?” Flanagan wondered. The power of Trump’s endorsements has been mixed — he backed losing candidates in a Senate race in Alabama and House race in Pennsylvania, but his recent attacks on South Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Sanford, and support for Sanford’s opponent Katie Arrington in her primary race against him, were widely seen as the driving force behind Arrington’s victory.

Trump’s support for Donovan hasn’t translated to the president appearing in the district or doing any campaigning on Donovan’s behalf, but NY1 reported Monday that Donald Trump, Jr. recorded a robocall going out to tens of thousands of potential voters on Monday night. Flanagan was skeptical that would work on Staten Islanders.

“I think it’s definitely seen as a B-list move. They’re a little cynical out here too — maybe because of the proximity to Manhattan.” Donald Trump, Jr. isn’t President Donald Trump. Staten Islanders’ attitude might be “Give me the big guy or nothing at all.”